Illinois: Flight Attendant’s Injury Claim on Board Plane Barred by Going and Coming Rule

An Illinois appellate court held that a flight attendant was not a traveling employee for purposes of the state’s Workers’ Compensation Act when she injured her knee on a flight from Denver to New York on the day before she was scheduled to work on a flight out of a New York airport. The court indicated the method and time of travel was the result of the claimant’s personal choices for her own benefit, as she chose to live near Denver, and from which the claimant’s employer derived no benefit. Under the facts of the case, the Commission ruled correctly in finding that the claimant did not qualify as a traveling employee at the time of her injury. Moreover, the claimant’s decision to use a leisure travel pass provided by her employer to commute from Colorado to New York did not transform her regular commute into a demand or exigency of her job.

Thomas A. Robinson, J.D., the Feature National Columnist for the LexisNexis Workers’ Compensation eNewsletter, is the co-author of Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law (LexisNexis).

LexisNexis Online Subscribers: Citations below link to Lexis Advance. Bracketed citations link to lexis.com.

See United Airlines, Inc. v. Illinois Workers’ Comp. Comm’n, 2016 IL App (1st) 151693WC, 2016 Ill. App. LEXIS 59 (Feb. 11, 2016) [2016 IL App (1st) 151693WC, 2016 Ill. App. LEXIS 59 (Feb. 11, 2016)]

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 14.02 [14.02]

For a more detailed discussion of the case, see http://www.workcompwriter.com/illinois-court-says-flight-attendant-is-not-a-traveling-employee-while-commuting/

Source: Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, the nation’s leading authority on workers’ compensation law.

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